Anna St Clair founded the Ceramic Experience in 2000. The first was a disused warehouse in Crieff.

St Clair supplies all shops with her own "bisque", or pottery made from liquid clay, from a factory in Crieff.

Celebrities who have tried their hand at pottery painting at the Ceramic Experience include Scots film star Ewan McGregor and comedian Dylan Moran Trained as a jeweller, her first job, aged 18, was a diamond valuer for De Beers. She still makes jewellery and recently her soon to be son-in-law requested she make their wedding rings.

She studied as a jeweller in Chile and ended up making a salmon-shaped tie pin made of semi-precious lapis lazuli for dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was at the launch of a fish factory. She made a similar one for Princess Anne.

Last year St Clair signed up to be part of a Channel 4 reality TV programme Unanimous. Nine contestants locked together in a bunker had to decide between them which one of them should walk away with a £1m prize. St Clair was the first to leave, causing the prize money to be cut in half.

"I have done everything I could possibly do in the early years to grow my business. I probably would still do absolutely anything," says St Clair. "I'd never say that the TV programme was the worse thing I've done. We make mistakes. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done but sometimes you think 'maybe that was a poor call'."

St Clair says one of the aims of her venture Mentor Me, is to give disaffected youths a chance to learn responsibility

"If you get those kids on the cusp of being bad and you say 'I trust you', giving a little responsibility and having faith in them can turn them from bad to good.